1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a visual-axis input and decision transfer device for detecting a visual axis of a user observing a display panel, and inputting a detection result of the user's visual axis as input information for the display panel to transfer a decision of the user, and a visual-axis input and decision-transfer method.
2. Related Background Art
A visual-axis input and decision-transfer device has been heretofore proposed and realized for detecting a visual axis of a user observing a display panel, and inputting a detection result of the user's visual axis as input information for the display panel to transfer user's decision. In an example of such visual axis input and decision-transfer device, a display panel indicating a plurality of characters such as hiragana or Japanese phonetic characters and alphabets is displayed on a computer screen, a visual axis of a user observing the display panel is detected, a character selected by the user is specified in accordance with a detection result of user's visual axis, and the specified character is inputted.
In the visual-axis input decision and transfer device, for example, in a known method of inputting the selected character, the selected character is confirmed as a character to be inputted by closing eyes while casting the visual axis to the character, or another action.
However, in the conventional visual-axis input and decision-transfer device, since the method of confirming the input by closing eyes or another action is used, the input cannot be performed if the eyes are closed too early. Therefore, in order to acquire an action timing for closing the eyes, the user is sometimes requested to have sufficient experience. Moreover, there is provided no means for notifying the user of an input failure caused by a too early timing of closing the eyes, of visual-axis detection failure by the user's eyes being not correctly captured, or of another visual-axis detection error. When the visual-axis detection errors frequently occur, the user cannot be notified of such condition, and may repeat wasteful input operations in vain without knowing the condition. In this manner, the user can obtain no visual-axis detection result such as the success or failure of the input by visual-axis detection. There is a possibility of user's repeating wasteful operations many times without noticing the failure of the input by visual axis including detection.
Moreover, when a large number of choices are displayed in the display panel, the display area of each choice is reduced, which makes it difficult to select an intended choice from the choices.